Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/62

52 French, school authorities non-essential to that particular course, but which with us are still firmly intrenched in every preparatory school programme; in brief, that the results obtained under the French programmes, in both the classical and scientific preparatory schools, are due to honest hard work, persistently continued for a term of years on a well-defined plan, which is characterized by a complete disjunction of the courses that lead to college, from those that are intended for youth for whose anticipated career in life a knowledge of the classical languages is not deemed essential.

A comparative examination of the programmes of the Boston Latin School with the French lycée course brings out this excess of hours in the French school very prominently. The French boy, in his ten years' sojourn in the lycée, spends 8,560 hours in the recitation-room, while in the corresponding course in Boston the recitation hours are 7,790 only. With a ten-per-cent excess in recitation hours, and a corresponding increase of study, it is evident that the two courses can not be considered "as substantially of the same strength." However much we might "enrich" our curricula by imitating French methods, it seems quite clear that we certainly could not, by this process, hope to "shorten" them any.

Turning to the relative assignment of time to the subjects taught in common by the two schools, there is to be noted also one other point where the statistics and Dr. Eliot are at variance. One searches in vain for that "preponderance" of time given to the French language in the lycées as compared with the instruction in the English language in the Boston Latin School. In fact, the "preponderance" is, on the contrary, altogether on the side of the Boston schools, where over twenty-eight per cent of the whole course is devoted to the mother-tongue, to only 20·8 per cent in the lycées. This is an interesting fact, which will doubtless be surprising to most readers. It is a prevalent opinion in the United States that in our schools too little time is devoted to the study of our own language. And lest it may be urged that this "preponderance" is offset by the nine hours' course per week in philosophy, given in the last year, where, President Eliot states, "French resumes almost exclusive possession of the programme," it may be said that, according to the official programme, this claim can not be legitimately made. The course of philosophy in question